Juvenile justice chief wants more use of civil citations

Wednesday

Jan 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2013 at 9:46 PM

PANAMA CITY — Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters hosted a town hall meeting Wednesday night to get community feedback on her proposals to reform the way courts address kids who break the law.

CHRIS OLWELL / The News Herald

PANAMA CITY — Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters hosted a town hall meeting Wednesday night to get community feedback on her proposals to reform the way courts address kids who break the law.

Essentially, Walters wants to create a more proactive DJJ focused on doing what’s best for those children, which in most cases means preventing young people from ever entering the system in the first place.

Juvenile crime has decreased statewide in each of the past five years, and Bay County mirrors that trend for the most part: Juvenile arrests in Bay County were slightly higher in 2011-12 after four consecutive years of decreases.

One of Walters’ proposals is to increase the use of civil citations rather than criminal citations for first-time misdemeanor offenders. A child arrested for shoplifting who abided by the impositions placed on him or her would walk away with a clean slate. If he or she doesn’t, they go through the system.

Data suggest civil citations work. They are considerably less expensive than criminal citations, and, according to DJJ literature, kids who are issued civil citations are less than half as likely to reoffend as those who end up on probation.

The use of civil citations is an area where the DJJ’s Bay County region lags behind the rest of the state. In 2011-12, only 14 of the more than 2,200 youth arrested were issued civil citations. Statewide, over the same period, about 25 percent of kids arrested got the opportunity to learn the error of their ways without actually entering the system.

During the meeting, she listened to comments and questions from representatives of the State Attorney’s Office, Boys and Girls Club and mental health professionals.

She also laid out a plan to rely more on diversion programs and use secure juvenile detention facilities only for the most serious offenders. It’s important to help kids leaving residential care facilities find the services they need to ensure they don’t end up right back again, too, said Alex Kelly, DJJ chief of staff.

The overall goal of the reforms Walters’ proposed, which is called the DJJ’s “Roadmap to System Excellence,” is to help kids who need help, Kelly said.

“Really the crux of the road map, and what we’re trying to do here … is how to get youth to right services at the right place at the right time,” Kelly said. “How we can increase the use of preventative services, which tend to have a better effect on youth, and tend also to cost the taxpayer less money.”

To that end, Walters and members off her staff spent the day Wednesday meeting with local representatives from law enforcement, the State Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office, as well as those from the school district and the clerk of courts. Walter’s proposals will need to be embraced by the local officials who must implement them if they are to succeed, she said.

“We know we all want to get to the same place, but we might not get there exactly the same way,” Walters said. “So it is important that that be driven in the community, because we’re in the community as well, and we can craft that in that fashion.”